Assange plans Swedish complaint over missing laptops

Publicerat tisdag 3 september 2013 kl 10.09

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said he would file a complaint Tuesday with the Swedish police, ahead of US President Barack Obama's visit to Stockholm. The complaint is about three laptops that were reportedly seized by airport authorities as he flew to Germany.

In an affidavit published Monday on Wikileak's website, Assange stated that his suitcase, containing three laptops, was illegally seized while travelling on a SAS flight from Stockholm's Arlanda Airport to Berlin.

He said the laptops, taken on Sept. 27, 2010, contained encrypted data and proof of the massacre in Garani, Afghanistan, where more than 60 women and children died in May 2009 after bombing by a U.S. airplane. Assange wrote that he believes the seizure of his suitcase was related to an ongoing U.S. investigation of Wikileaks.

"I file this affidavit in the knowledge that there will likely be pressures for this matter not to be investigated, but in the knowledge that the law requires an investigation," Assange wrote in the affidavit.

On Wednesday, Obama and a US delegation will visit Stockholm and meet with their Swedish counterparts while Assange, who faces questioning by Swedish prosecutors for alleged sexual misconduct, remains in the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he has sought asylum to avoid extradition.

"Now is the time for everyone to take a stand to put an end to Obama’s war against national security journalism – at home and abroad," Assange wrote. "This filing, recent court victories, and our successful intervention in the case of Edward Snowden, represent the continuing reorientation of WikiLeaks from legal defence to legal attack."